Something a lot of people don’t get is that there are ways you can trust a consistently mediocre developer that you can’t trust a volatile but brilliant coworker. You almost always know how the formers’ work will be broken. The latter will blow up spectacularly on you at some terribly in opportune moment.
That’s not to say fire all your brilliant devs and hire mediocrity, but the reverse case is often made by loudmouths trying to fluff their own egos. Getting rid of the average devs is ignoring the vocational aspects of the job.
I think the analogy makes since but I'm not sure I've met too many brilliant but volatile people. At least the volatility I see in them is more like getting distracted by some rabbit hole or doing some other task. Which I think that's easier to handle but highly depends on management... (For the mediocre dev, usually their screwups are categorically consistent too, so you know what to give extra scrutiny. You can also teach them)
FWIW, I still use LLMs, but I just don't trust them. I think people get these confused. The thing is you just use tools you don't trust very differently than other ones. A simple but common example is I'll use them to aid google searches. Ask about a topic and it'll drop a bunch of info, but you treat them as bullshitters. Take a "trust but verify" approach. Since it sounds accurate, it usually drops a bunch of vernacular to that topic. Getting these keywords can really help with searches, especially when terms are overloaded.
I think in general it is good to treat them as bullshitters. There's still utility in that, but it is less straight forward.
Side note:
LLMs have really changed the way I think about people. I never understood how used cars salesmen were so successful despite the widespread stereotype, but I guess a lot more people like sycophants than I would have expected. Honestly, I can't stand how much the things praise me. It's really belittling. Praise me for actual accomplishments, not over every little thing.
Don't give me a "yes man" give me a man that can actually do things. Never trust "yes men", they don't ever have your best interests in mind. Trust people that will say no. People who will tell you you're wrong when you are wrong. You're not the main character, no one is. The whole reason we use these tools and work with others is because we couldn't possibly know everything and do everything ourselves. Yes men just try to convince you you're the main character. They know the easiest person to fool is yourself.
> You almost always know how the formers’ work will be broken.
The thing is that there are enough people who blindly trust ChatGPT's answers, and they don't know in which ways they could be broken, and they wouldn't have the knowledge to verify the answers because they are asking about things they themselves know very little about.
That’s not to say fire all your brilliant devs and hire mediocrity, but the reverse case is often made by loudmouths trying to fluff their own egos. Getting rid of the average devs is ignoring the vocational aspects of the job.